thyssenkrupp Elevator Opens Germany's Highest Viewing Platform

10/9/2017

thyssenkrupp Elevator will celebrate a milestone with the opening of the visitors’ platform at its test tower in Rottweil, Germany. The opening of the visitors’ platform, which is located 760 feet above the Black Forest and Swabian Alb on the top floor of the artfully constructed building, comes almost exactly three years after the test tower’s initial ground-breaking ceremony.

At peak times, up to 150 workers defied wind and weather to complete the tallest building in Baden-Württemberg. The test tower is also the largest innovation center for elevator technology in Germany.

Dr. Heinrich Hiesinger, CEO at thyssenkrupp AG; Andreas Schierenbeck, CEO at thyssenkrupp Elevator; and Rottweil mayor Ralf Broß will unveil the visitors’ platform to distinguished guests on October 7 that include Winfried Kretschmann, prime minister of Baden- Württemberg; Volker Kauder, member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Rottweil-Tuttlingen; as well as test tower architects Werner Sobek and Helmut Jahn.

“The opening of the test tower is an amazing feeling for me,” Schierenbeck says. “During the entire construction phase, hardly anything went wrong and I am very proud that the building was completed within the planned budget and time frame. Our employees have already started research on our high-speed elevators on site.”

Schierenbeck emphasizes that the new building is a symbol of progress in every respect: “The test tower is helping thyssenkrupp Elevator revolutionize the global elevator industry.”

Dr. Hiesinger praised the tower as a “future laboratory for a new era in lift technology and an impressive example of the innovative power and engineering skills at thyssenkrupp.”

The Group has invested approximately $46 million USD in total for the construction.

“The test tower is an innovative landmark. A great many people here identify with it,” Broß says. “From the very beginning, the members of the public had expressed an interest in visiting the tower, hence why thyssenkrupp built the viewing platform. The openness of the company and the strong participation of the public were key to this success. This test tower has positioned Rottweil as a forward-looking business location and increases its tourist appeal at the same time.”

Since the ground-breaking ceremony in October 2014, 15,000 cubic meters of concrete and more than 2,500 tons of steel have been used to build the tower. For the textile architecture, industrial climbers worked around the clock to wrap the tower in just under 17,000 square meters of glass fiber. The polymer-coated texture not only gives the building that ‘certain something’ but also protects it from intense sunshine and reduces the building’s movement by breaking down the forces of the wind.

Since December 2016, high-speed elevators have been tested, developed and certified at the test tower as part of thyssenkrupp Elevator's mission to transform cities into the best places to live.

Next-generation technologies that are being tested in Rottweil include the latest generation of elevators, the MULTI. The new MULTI system, installed in three of the twelve shafts in the test tower, uses magnetic levitation technology from Transrapid as the drive. Thanks to its unique, rope-less construction, several elevator cabins can be operated in one shaft. This not only increases the transport capacity by up to 50 percent but also reduces the required space for the lift in the building. Additionally, the elevators can move sideways as well as vertically and without any height limitations, which enables unprecedented possibilities in the architecture of buildings.